86-94, Cromford Hill

This is a row of five houses on Cromford Hill, built in the 1780s. They were constructed in a single phase for Richard Arkwright to house workers for his nearby textile mills. The row follows the slope of the hill, resulting in three distinct rooflines. The walls are built of roughly coursed rubble stone, with tiled roofs and three brick chimney stacks, coloured red and black.

The houses are planned in a style typical of Arkwright’s early developments. Each house originally had a single living unit with service areas to the rear, arranged under a catslide roof. They are three storeys high and have two bays facing the front. The entrance bay has no windows above the ground floor. The other bay features two-light stone mullioned windows on all three floors. The doorways have large rectangular lintels, with crudely carved capitals and bases on the impost blocks, all carefully tooled. All original doorways remain intact, along with the window surrounds, although the mullions have been removed from number 86. Twentieth-century casement windows are present in all properties except number 88, which has top-hung openers, and number 92, which features a bow window inserted into the original ground-floor window opening. Twentieth-century doors have been installed throughout. The raised pavements in front of the row may be original and are considered part of the listed building.